


Keys

by Blue



Series: Living Arrangements [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-02
Updated: 2013-07-02
Packaged: 2017-12-16 20:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue/pseuds/Blue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission had been... long. He didn't have pictures of Jack in the ball gown, but he'd settle for catching up on his sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keys

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the observation (I can't for the life of me remember WHERE) that almost every time they show Daniel's apartment on the show, it's a different apartment. And how do you pay the water bill when you get stuck on yet another planet in yet another mission-gone-wrong?
> 
> Originally posted [June 2006 to Livejournal](http://blue-meridian.livejournal.com/55206.html). I'm managing to resist going back and ripping apart and editing/re-writing the whole thing (which would be a long, slippery slope for me, lemme tell you).

Daniel had showered and changed into the street clothes that were still in his locker – jeans, t-shirt – from over 2 weeks ago when they’d left for PX3-547. It was going to be a two day trip off world. Two days. Not two weeks.

Daniel is certain he would have remembered that from the briefing.

Not that trips off world ever go as planned.

Still, this mission was a bit excessive: two weeks of exploring, negotiating, getting shot at, getting smacked around, three days of thinking Sam was dead and watching Jack go apeshit, more negotiating, some brain bending translation efforts as the walls caved in, a celebratory feast with punch that wasn’t punch at all as it was apparently pure grain alcohol in disguise, and – oh god – Jack in a _ball gown_.

Teal’c’s profound lack of expression during that last bit was almost as priceless as Jack himself. Daniel had seriously mourned his distinct inability to operate anything as complicated as a camera right then, not to mention access to one as they’d been separated from all their gear over a week before.

They’d finally crawled back through the gate, barely recovered from some very memorable hangovers caused by _fruit punch_ , reported to General Hammond, and been given the mercy of two days down time before they had to try and make sense of the whole thing on paper. Which promised to be almost as much fun as the mission itself.

He sighed, closed the locker door, grimaced, opened it back up to retrieve his keys, shut it again, and leaned his forehead against the cool metal. The sudden smack to his shoulder woke him up with a yelp. 

Jack, still red-eyed and pissy, grinned in the way that made Daniel narrow his eyes and prepare to run, but he only said, “Sleep, Daniel. At home and not before.”

He turned to go, adding, “If I have to crawl out of bed to peel your ass off the highway? You will seriously be on my shit list.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, stifled a yawn, and trudged out of the locker room and towards the blissful comforts of home.

………….

Accelerating away from the mountain, he flicked the radio off – it just burned his ears after the last two weeks off world – and planned out his weekend. 

Home. Strip. Bed – sheets!! Soft sheets! Sleep. Lots of sleep. Then coffee. Good coffee. Real food. Hot bath, maybe with some of that bubble stuff that he couldn’t use on a night before he had to work since it always had Sam and Janet sniffing him and Jack looking at him sideways the whole day. Which, okay, he could admit it smelled a bit… girly. But it smelled _good_ and the whole concept of girl scents and guy scents was culturally programmed anyway, so why did he feel guilty about it again? Daniel sighed. He was such a coward.

Then he laughed a little breathlessly, leaning his head against the wheel. He hadn’t been the one in a _ball gown_.

The car horn behind him pointed out the light was green and he was just sitting there, hands on the wheel, eyes glazed over and grinning inanely. Possibly had been for some time since Daniel didn’t actually remember there being a car behind him in the first place. He shook himself, stepped on the gas, and made it the two more turns to his apartment.

He scowled at the car in his parking spot. Finding another, he pulled the car in and shut it off. He drug himself out onto the pavement, found his door key, and walked slowly up to the building, through the suddenly heavy front door, and up the steps to his oh so wonderfully close domicile. Daniel paused and smiled at the door, thinking of how amazing a door it was as it led to _bed_ and _coffee_. He blinked, admitted to himself he was perhaps a little punchy with exhaustion, and put his key in the lock.

The key, which _wouldn’t go in_ , fumbled loose when he tried to turn it, scratching across his left hand that was holding the door knob.

Daniel blinked.

Bringing his left hand up to his mouth to suck at the scratch, he contemplated the door knob. Experimentally, he attempted to push the key in again. No, not even close. It most definitely did not fit.

He looked at the key. Yes, that was the key to his apartment. There were only a few keys on his key ring and that was definitely the one – the car key was completely different and there was one padlock key that he had no idea what it went to, so unless someone switched his keys… Nah. Only Jack would do that, and probably not until next week; by then he would have recovered sufficiently and been forced to report on what the hell had gone wrong - as usual - which always made him cranky. 

So, it was the right key. Daniel looked at the apartment – yeah, definitely the right door. He was tired but he wasn’t _that_ tired. It had been a long two weeks, however. He fumbled out his wallet and flipped it open for his driver’s license just to be sure.

He grimaced - it was his old address, the one SGC had dropped him into after the last descension. Once they’d let him off the mountain anyway, and given him some shiny new documentation (and he did not want to know what the procedures were to have someone declared ‘previously dead, now living’ but, weirdly, he hadn’t had to sign a single thing). The upside had been that he hadn’t had to take the whole driver’s test again. Jack had made vaguely insulting noises that indicated he felt that was an oversight, but Daniel had just floored it and demonstrated his reflexes were just fine, thanks.

So, okay, the driver’s license was no help, but Daniel _knew_ he was home. Right up until a strange woman yanked open the door with a look of outright hostility.

It was, after all, about 3 am on Earth. Which he was on now, even if it’d been morning when he’d left PX3-547 just a few hours ago. Morning after being awake all night throwing up, no less, and at one point he’d been convinced he was going to start throwing up the lining of his stomach or maybe just some of his intestines _any minute now_. He was never going to be able to drink fruit punch ever again. Damn he was tired.

But he hadn’t meant to get anyone out of bed in his apartment at 3 am. Quite reasonably, he’d expected there to be no one there to wake up.

Daniel winced, “Um, hi?” 

What he could see of the apartment behind her, it was most definitely not his. He had never used that color of fuchsia in his life and would have noticed if he had an entire _wall_ of it.

“What’dya want?”

“I’m… sorry. I, uh, I really thought this was my apartment.”

The woman narrowed her eyes some more, and, wow, he felt like he was in some kind of weird alien drug mind trip (They had come back through the gate, right? What had been _in_ that punch??). She pulled the pink robe tighter and rubbed at her mussed hair with one hand.

“It’s not.” And Daniel could hear the implied _you moron_ quite clearly, “Lived here a week. Signed the papers, paid the money. Wasn’t nothing here when I moved in. Go sober up and maybe you’ll remember where you live, kid.”

She slammed the door.

“Just hung over, actually.” He said to the door. “And, _kid_??”

Feeling somewhere between irritated and dazed, he turned, walked back out to his car, turned back around, and contemplated the building. Yes. Yes he remembered living here.

There were still the traces of tire tracks in the grass where someone had gone up over the curb and across the side walk the day before he’d left. There was a crack in the walkway outside the front door that he stumbled over nearly every morning. There was the bench across the street where Jack had been sitting, waiting for Daniel to come home so he could apologize – in a Jack sort of way – after being an incredible _asshole_ on PX3-689. And he knew it was the right bench since there was an F-16 roughed out with a pocket knife on the middle slat, right hand side.

He dug his cell phone out of the center console, turned it on, was incredibly relieved to find it actually charged, and pressed 1 and send. Jack’s voice mail kicked on immediately. Daniel rolled his eyes, said “Call me” and hung up. Looking at it for a moment, it suddenly occurred to him that Jack may not have even made it out of the mountain – even if Janet hadn’t gotten to him, and her waylaying him was a distinct possibility considering what kind of hell he’d looked like – and he may have just crashed in a bunk there. 

Daniel sighed, turned on his car with a key that actually worked, and drove back to Stargate Command.

………….

He passed through the checkpoint, parked, signed in twice, fell asleep in the elevator three times, and finally made it to his office. At which point he wondered what the hell he expected to do there, turned around, and went searching for Jack.

Jack hadn’t actually made it so much as out of the locker room. He was laying on his back on the narrow bench, feet on the floor, arms hanging off the sides with his hands grazing the concrete, completely comatose. Smirking, Daniel backed out, retrieved a very small camera from his office, snapped a few pictures, and slid it into his back pocket before approaching carefully, “Jack!”

Jack whined.

Daniel rocked back on his heels and rubbed at his eyes, “Damnit, Jack, you will not be happy when you wake up if I let you sleep here.”

“Wanna,” Jack mumbled, “tired”

“Jaaaaack…”

“Noooooo…”

“I have pictures of the ball gown and I know how to use them.”

Jack tilted his head up and cracked open an eye, “You’re lying.”

“Yes,” Daniel said, dropping his hand, “on the other hand, even if I did, Teal’c would’ve confiscated them. I think he was really rather disturbed. It seemed to stretch even his Jack O’Neill version of team leader.”

Jack glared, “I hate you, Daniel, just so we’re clear on that.”

“Of course you do, now tell me why my key doesn’t work in my apartment door and one of my walls is fuchsia? Not to mention the woman living there.”

Jack let his head drop back, “Yes, I can see where a woman in your apartment would be obvious cause for alarm. Jesus, Daniel, I don’t know. Were you at the right apartment?”

Daniel crossed his arms and scowled, “Yes, I was at the right apartment!”

“Then how the hell should I know? I was off world as long as you were, remember? And I feel worse, I might add. Go ask bookkeeping.”

Daniel blinked.

Jack tilted his head back up and looked at him, “You know, bookkeeping? The people who pay your bills, with the traveling across the galaxy thing?” He let his head drop back again, mumbling, “Can’t really mail checks for the electric bill through the gate.”

“Huh.” Daniel headed for bookkeeping.

………….

After three people and an hour of explaining the situation what felt like a hundred times, he found himself waiting another 20 minutes until a fourth person, who supposedly had all the answers, arrived for his shift. Half way awake by this point – whether he liked it or not and no, no he didn’t, as he wanted a nice long soak in some hot water with lots of fluffy bubbles at the very least and preferably his own bed with soft sheets and not in a tent, on the ground, or inside a cell _again_ – he left to scrounge up a large cup of half way decent coffee and returned in time to almost run into the man in question walking in the door.

He was an accountant as it turned out, and one of his duties was making sure all SG1’s bills got paid despite their frequent, sometimes unplanned, and/or extended absences. He explained that there had been a snafu with Daniel’s apartment lease, that it had been shorter than they realized, paperwork, blah blah blah, and yes, the locks had been changed, because Daniel actually _did_ have a different address now. He even had keys for him with a nice little tag that had his new address on it. 

Daniel contemplated that he should just leave the tag on so he knew _for sure_ next time where his bed was. He sighed, “I just wanted to go home and sleep and have some good coffee when I finally woke up. Now I need to unpack.” He paused, “Of course, I didn’t pack any of it in the first place.”

The accountant smiled with a bit of a quirk to his eyebrows, “Actually, no you didn't - I did, mostly. It’s all unpacked at the new address.”

“Oh” Daniel blinked some more, his eyes feeling gritty and unpleasant, “that's… interesting.”

The accountant was shuffling some papers with Daniel’s name on them, “Why’s that?”

“Well… I won’t be able to find anything.”

He looked back up, “You should – I put everything away the same as I did the other times and it didn’t look like you’d moved anything. By the way, do you like the coffeemaker? I made an effort to research that purchase in particular, given your apparent affection for the beverage.” 

Daniel just stared at him for two full minutes before he finally concluded that no, he _couldn’t_ remember moving his things since before he worked at Stargate Command, despite being declared dead twice (officially), and yes, he had a wonderful coffeemaker that _he did not remember buying_. How many apartments had he had since he started at the SGC anyway? 

Daniel finally left after another half an hour of conversation, during which he came to the frightening conclusion that his accountant – hah! He had an accountant! – knew him better than he knew himself. He paused suddenly in the hallway as it hit him that he – they? – had moved _all_ of his belongings. Packed it all up and moved it. Every last thing.

Daniel blushed scarlet.

………….

Jack was still in the locker room. Still asleep on the bench. Which was going to leave him in no small amount of discomfort once he regained consciousness, not to mention the amusement of whoever was first in for duty at shift change, which was rapidly approaching.

Daniel watched him sleep for a moment, snapped a couple more pictures for the added value of how Jack was now drooling a bit, and sipped at the last of his coffee while nudging him with his foot.

“Jaaaaack… wakey wakey”

Jack just groaned.

“Okay, you really have to get up this time. You’ve been there for hours. It’s going to be painful as it is.”

“Noooooo…”

“Yessssss. Now move your ass, Jack. I’ll even drive you home.”

Jack looked up and winced, probably at the pain shooting through his neck and down his spine, and said, “I thought you couldn’t even find your _own_ place.”

“Huh, yeah, funny thing – did you know the bookkeeping department picked out my apartment? Well, apartments, actually. And they move stuff and everything?”

Jack sighed, letting his head drop back, “Of course I did, Daniel. Especially your stuff. You’ve had a dozen apartments since I’ve known you.”

“I _have_?”

“Every time I visit you it’s a different address – haven’t you even noticed?”

Daniel sipped at his coffee a bit more and finally said, “Well… no. No. Just… no, not really.” He paused, “I’ve been distracted.”

“Ya think? I remember at least twice when there’ve been memos about relocations taped to the front of your locker. You had to have seen them since you went to the right place. Someone must’ve forgot that you might not see your inbox between the mission and going home. Usually they switch the keys off your keychain and everything. Oh my _god_ I’m dying.”

Daniel looked mournfully into his empty cup, tossed it in the trash, and went to lever Jack up off the bench. Jack grunted as his joints protested the motion, “I told you I hate you, right?”

Daniel nodded, one of Jack’s arms around his shoulders as he half carried him, “I hate you, too. On the other hand, you’re going to have regular access to a great coffeemaker now.”

“Huh?” Jack stopped his tortured walk. 

Daniel shrugged, “Obviously this whole moving thing has just gotten confusing so I’m coming to live with you.”

Jack stared at him.

Daniel grinned.

Jack narrowed his eyes.

Daniel snickered and tugged him back into motion.

“Oh my god,” Jack groaned, resuming the trek to the surface, “we’ll kill each other inside a month.”

“Jack we share a _pup tent_ half the time. Surely we can share something larger.”

“Hah!!”


End file.
